Stellar - SDF Ecosystem Updates: Lumen Distribution Programs

Continuing our series on the Stellar ecosystem, today we’ll be focusing on lumen distribution program updates.

Stellar Community Fund

Recapping our statement last week, “While we have active distribution programs like the Stellar Build Challenge and the Partnership Grant Program,
one of the things we’ve heard requested is a method for the community
to participate in guiding lumen distribution. Therefore we’re excited to
announce the Stellar Community Fund.”

The goal of the Community Fund is to award projects the community
deems of high value to the ecosystem, or otherwise worthy of support.
Unlike the SBC, which is judged by SDF, the Community Fund will be run
completely by people voted-in by the Stellar community. SDF will oversee
the pool, but distribution will be handled by these elected Community
Ambassadors. This system should incentivize community members to choose
ambassadors that are diligent and motivated. The community fund pool can
be used for any project these ambassadors deem worthy (applications,
artwork, tutorials, etc)!

Ambassadors will be voted in by the community bi-annually. This gives
them 6 months of access to the funding pool. In order to award a
project, delegates will take proposals from projects and community
members. After reviewing, Ambassadors will vote on whether or not to
pass the proposal. If the proposal passes review, ambassadors will
decide how many lumens to grant to a project out of the pool. Once the
pool is depleted for a cycle, no new grants can be given.

Stay tuned for more details! We’ll publish the full program description on Stellar.org in Jan 2019.

Partnership Grant Program update

The Partnership Grant Program was established in 2017 to provide
support for exceptional projects in the Stellar ecosystem, and to
encourage targeted development around activities fundamental to the
growth of the network.

We are pleased to share that since its inception, the program has
awarded 34 companies, from all over the world, representing a diverse
mix of use-cases and communities. These 34 companies were selected out
of 450+ applications received since the program began.

For a list of award recipients, click here. This is a new and permanent site page that will maintain a list of all Program awardees, updated quarterly.

In our experience administering the Partnership Grant Program we have
learned a tremendous amount. Foremost, it takes a lot of work to manage
and operate a high caliber grant program. However, through this
experience, we are more certain than ever of the value this program can
bring to the Stellar ecosystem. While it continues to be a learning
process, we now know we can build long-term, mutually beneficial
partnerships that have multiplier effects in the ecosystem.

Looking ahead into 2019, there will be a revision to the current Call
for Partnerships criteria, expanding on or highlighting new focus areas
in the ecosystem for institutional engagement.

Launch of the Academic Research Program

The Stellar Development Foundation is soliciting proposals for basic
research advancing the foundation’s goals of financial inclusion, fast
and inexpensive cross-border payments, efficient decentralized markets,
and other beneficial applications of distributed ledger technology.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

Decentralized global consensus without mining, including improvements to or analysis of the Stellar Consensus Protocol